Wait Watchers

Fried food isn’t good for you. I know this, you know this, we all know this, but isn’t it hard to resist?

My weekly ration usually come from the traditional chip shop. Fish, steak and kidney pudding, meat balls, all with chips, plus side dishes of mushy peas, gravy or mild curry as appropriate.

However, I have been deprived of late because my favourite chip shop had a fire over Christmas and didn’t re-open until the end of February following an extensive re-fit.

Matt’s Plaice (geddit?) is a traditional chip shop and the best for miles. The batter on the fish is always perfectly crisp and their chips are evenly brown and floury. It’s also quite small and you often see people queueing outside in all weathers as testament to its popularity.

But one of the things I like is the people-watching while I’m waiting. Like last night when a young woman put her head round the door and asked what time they were open till.

Matt looked at his watch and said at sevenish (it was 6:45pm). The woman sighed, “I’m just on my way to Weight Watchers to get weighed and was hoping to call in on my way back.”

Which bears out my opening line. We all know what fried food does to us and we just don’t care!

Nobody’s prefect. If you find any spelling mistakes or other errors in this post, please let me know by highlighting the text and pressing Ctrl+Enter.

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The hyphen in people-watching was vital. Without it, that sentence would have taken on an entirely different meaning. One might have pictured pale-faced Mancunians slavering at the fish and chip shop window muttering, “We know our plaice!”